UNC reinstates Allen Artis to football team

Allen Artis, a UNC football player who was accused of sexual assault, sits beside of his attorney, Kerry Sutton, during an interview in September. Prosecutors dismissed charges against Artis in June and he was reinstated to the football team on Thursday. The News & Observernewsobserver.com

Allen Artis, a UNC football player who was accused of sexual assault, sits beside of his attorney, Kerry Sutton, during an interview in September. Prosecutors dismissed charges against Artis in June and he was reinstated to the football team on Thursday. The News & Observernewsobserver.com

CHAPEL HILL

Allen Artis has been reinstated to the North Carolina football team, a week after an Orange County district attorney dropped the misdemeanor sexual battery and assault charges that Artis had been facing.

Artis, a rising senior linebacker from Marietta, Ga., was suspended from the UNC football team last fall after Delaney Robinson, a fellow UNC student, publicly accused him of rape. Artis denied wrongdoing and maintained that his encounter with Robinson had been consensual.

In early April, UNC's Title IX office completed an investigation that concluded Artis did not violate any university policy. Jim Woodall, the Orange County district attorney, last week dropped the misdemeanor charges against Artis, who’d been hoping, his attorney once said, to “clear his name.”

According to a court document released after the dismissal of the charges, the case had been “resolved to the satisfaction of the parties.” Artis and members of his family, and his legal defense team, held a press conference on UNC's campus last week.

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There, between the Old Well and UNC's main administrative building, Artis spoke emotionally about what he said he'd experienced in the months since he'd been accused. He said his grades suffered and that he felt doubts about his future. He said he hoped he'd be reinstated to the football team.

That reinstatement came on Thursday, in the form of a one sentence statement from Bubba Cunningham, the UNC athletic director: “After conversations with coach (Larry) Fedora and Allen, we have reinstated Allen to our football program effective immediately.”

Artis played in 25 games during his first two seasons at UNC, and played in two last fall before his suspension.

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